Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
Akamai Technologies Inc., the large Web infrastructure provider, is promoting a new tracking technique it calls “pixel-free” technology….
Privacy advocates say companies like content-delivery networks and search providers have a lot of data at their fingertips that could be useful in advertising. Akamai “has access to an astonishing amount of Web traffic” and thus could track many users, says CHRIS JAY HOOFNAGLE, DIRECTOR OF THE BERKELEY CENTER FOR LAW & TECHNOLOGY’S INFORMATION-PRIVACY PROGRAMS.
But Akamai says the information in its case belongs to the websites using its service, so it can’t use the data unless its clients allow it. And advertising, Akamai says, is still only a small part of its business.